Book Review: The Age of Persuasion

Came across The Age of Persuasion at the library and picked it up. It was OK in some ways, poor in others.

The book is a history of modern day marketing, as seen through the eyes of an advertising copywriter turned broadcaster. It covers a lot of interesting history, rife with colorful examples, of advertising over the past century.

On the plus side, there are a ton of interesting factoids, and the authors seemed to have done their research. They cover the advertising side of the business and the factors motivating players in each strata of the business.

On the down side, there are three flaws I find with the book.

The first, which is minor and forgivable, and which can be seen by the cover art, is that the book is very much trying to ride the coattails of Madmen, focusing, and perhaps over-glorifying advertising's 'golden age'.

The second is that "marketing" is not the same thing as "advertising". If the book's tagline were "how advertising ate our culture", that'd be fine, but otherwise the authors perpetuate the myth that marketing is about ramming stuff down people's throats. It largely ignores the other half, which is figuring out what they want or need to begin with.

The third issue is that by seeing the world through an ad man's eyes, the book is too quick to ascribe too much value and too little blame to advertising in the influence that it has. Where they do cite negatives, it's always the other guys, the inept and evil ad men, not the creative good ones (which they likely include themselves in). I feel like it's really not so black and white.

If you can see past the negatives, there are some interesting data points and interesting bits of trivia here. Just make sure you take much of the book with a grain of salt.

The Age of Persuasion: How Marketing Ate Our Culture

Extra Credit: An open letter to EA marketing

A bit old, but right on the money. EA really should fire whoever greenlights all this shit.

The boy who cried 'advergame'

So, back in 2006, Microsoft did a deal with Burger King to do 3 BK-branded titles and distribute them with value meals at a nominal fee ($3.99). The fee aside, these were essentially free advertising-subsidized game titles for the console.

The three titles were met with lukewarm acceptance (Sneak King got a 54 on Metacritic, Big Bumpin a 63, Pocket Bike Racers a 54), with a nod of the head to the $3.99 price point.

Then Yaris came out, and was deservedly panned. A 17 on MC, which, well, you have to really try to score that low don't you.

Later, another ad-supported title, Doritos Dash of Destruction, came out and scored a 53, and yes, wasn't a very good game.

Then in the past week, two more Doritos-sponsored games were released on Xbox Live Arcade. "Harms Way", and "Doritos Crash Course". How did they do on meta-critic?

No one has rated either one? Really? Not one critic review? Not one user review? Really?

Is it possible that people have become so soured on sponsored titles that they just assume they are crap?

Here's the thing too. I played Crash Course a while last night... and it's pretty good. Kind of a Trials-HD meets Ninja Warrior using player avatars. Definitely better than a lot of games I've paid $10 for. Proof that the ad-supported model can work on console.

If only people don't assume that they get what they pay for.

New infectious Scrabble ads

The new series of Scrabble ads from Mattel are awesome. They are aiming to reinvigorate the brand, and are certainly enough to get a heads up from people that might not otherwise get it.

Ultimately though, it'll take more than ads to get people to play. Interesting variants to the rule might help (speed scrabble, or themed games might make for good party debates "spelunk is NOT a dirty word!")

Stolar stellar? Sorry seller!

GamesIndustry.biz has an interview up with Bernie Stolar, Google's 'Adsense for Games' (formerly Adscape), director and advisor.

Man, I hope he provides some value behind the scenes, because from how this interview reads, it only backs up what I thought after seeing his session at Casual Connect.

Google, you don't need rock-star names for spokespeople. You are supposed to be rock stars! Please dig a smart guy out of the back somewhere and have him be spokesperson.

Surreal PS3 Euro Ad

While their whole hot-chix-on-toilets thing was just wacky and off the mark, I have to admit that I *love* this PS3 ad. I'm not sure it's enough to dig them out of their hole, but it's *so* much cooler than the whole "jump in" set of ads MS did.

Mind you, I think they are definitely following our lead, just doing something edgier.

More on the mainstreaming of games

If this isn't a great example of mainstream of games, then I don't know what is.

From the description on youtube:

Blizzard has teamed up with iCoke, Coca-Cola's name-brand presence in China to create a joint World of Warcraft and Coca-Cola televised commercial, featuring Chinese pop sensation SHE...

Tidbits from around the blogosphere...

Pressed for time (long weekend or no!), here are a few things that caught my eye this week:

• Google Earth has a flight sim easter egg. Like many, I thought "Steve.... what are you up to?", but he claims "nuffin!". (My first thought is that this is just like any other Christensen effect thing - Those that sell flight sims (like MS) just have to stay far enough ahead of free to justify the money.
• This story of the boorish behavior of one exec director of the "video game expo" at PAX (VGE seems to want to compete with them and was attending to poach talent and gather intel) is very funny. Good luck with your event there buddy.
• Ubisoft seems to be dipping their toe in the water with free, ad-supported full PC games. A few of the casual folks have been trying their hand at this, but this is the first I've seen it for full retail titles like Far Cry. Curious to see how it turns out (i.e. if you see more games showing up --> it went well!)
• There's been some fallout about the ESRB changing the rating on Manhunt 2 (from AO to M) and their not wanting to disclose what changed in the game or the rating of it. Sounds like the ESRB is rapidly turning into the MPAA. Now more than ever, I want to see this film.
• The 'shrimponomics' post on Freakonomics is required reading. First, read this one. Now answer the question, and only then (spoiler) read this one. The exercise, now that you've completed shrimponomics, is to think about how this applies to your company (i.e. in my case, game-o-nomics, console-o-nomics, and Redmond-o-nomics :-)
• Maven and her friends: The state of AI on a host of classic games (connect-4, Scrabble...)

What should World of Warcraft and David Copperfield both fear?

...someone giving away what they charge for, and tanking their business in the process.

Wha-wha-wha-what?!

I'll explain. But first a commercial interlude. Please watch this very short video. It's brief, and it's entertaining.



OK, so this is one of a series of clever little commercials (series of them can be seen here - thanks to boingboing for the link) for a company doing technical support. Very catchy. "See how simple it is when we explain how it's done?".

Now, if that series of commercials takes off, it could be a real thorn in the side of a busking street magician that makes his living doing these exact tricks. Of course, that's not going to bother Belgacom. After all, whats a couple street magicians compared to a successful ad campaign of a large corporation. Casualties of War. Can't make a cake without breaking a few eggs and all of that.

OK, so where am I going with this?

There've been few posts as of late (Techcrunch, Raph Koster, etc) about the new Barbie Virtual World. Some see it as a response to Webkinz, which in one way is true, but it's not the most interesting way to look at it.

Barbie and Webkinz are loss leaders. They are giving it away to sell dolls or plushies or whatever. MyCoke (FKA Cokeworld) is giving it away to build brand affinity only. You don't even need to buy a can of diet/vanilla/lemon/zero coke to play this version of Habbo, you just need to not mind hangin' with the red'n'white.

Developing games costs money. Developing virtual worlds/mmos costs even more money. Building the next Wow is going to be a 50-100M affair. Building a small high-quality 2.5d casual mmo is, what, maybe $1M-$2M (of course, some are hoping to lower that, but that's another story). Blowing a couple million on development of a game title means you are going to have to do a fair number of subs/item-sales to get into the black.

But if you are selling plastic dolls nationwide at Toys-R-Us, and trying to differentiate yourself in a crowded market, then 1-2M is an efficient spend on a differentiating feature.

And if you made $26B last year selling sugar water at a healthy profit, then a couple million bucks is, my guess, a blip on the screen of the marketing budget.

At Casual Connect this year, there was a lot of talk about the big media companies (e.g. MTV/Viacom) coming into the space. What I don't think people grokked though, is that not only will they come in and compete for the same customers, but they may completely upset the apple cart in an effort to get those gamers interested in their IP (and thus watching the shows, buying the dolls, eating up all the hollywood soup and washing it down with a sugary, fizzy dose of free-to-play branded mmo.

"Free" as a business model will certainly mix things up a bit.

Now, back to my analogy.

David Copperfield isn't worried about those videos. They aren't showing us how to make a buick disappear or anything like that. Same goes for WoW. No one's giving away THAT level of experience, so Blizzard doesn't have to worry.

Yet.

Thing is though, that this combination of Christensen effect ("not good enough" creeps up on you until you find that "good enough" is way cheaper than you and nipping at your heels) and big media money are going to make for a volatile and interesting mix in the MMO/VW space over the next couple years.

This is somewhat analogous to the America's Army game a few years back. Giving away a multi-million dollar FPS as a marketing tool, they didn't put Epic or Valve out of business, but there were a few less B-level FPS's sold as a result, I'd wager.

So the thought exercise for you (as I try to bring this in for a landing), is what do you do when your competitors business model suddenly is "free"?

Line Rider Runner Ad

via Adventure in Digital Marketing comes this nifty advertising banner/overlay, which is an Adidas ad play on Line Rider. Unfortunately it falls a little flat due to the lack of physics, which is what made Line Rider the sensational toy that it is. If the runner had jumped, rolled, etc, this could have been as good. Still a nifty try Adidas!

Results of the Generic Defense Game experiment

Jim Greer of Kongregate points us to this great post from 'PsychoGoldfish', creator of Generic Defense Game. As the game's creator puts it, GDG "was built and distributed as an experiment to get some insight on the current state of the independent web-based gaming community"

It's a fantastic read, though I wish he'd actually disclosed figures behind comments like "The ads in the game were a real surprise to me. I did not expect the high level of performance the would ultimately yield".

Anyhow, here's the money quote from the whole article:

Now, a lot of commercialized sites have made it possible to earn a pretty good living in this industry without having to build your own income generating websites. These commercialized sites kicked off a whole new generation of talent, and really helped to raise the bar in quality…at least.. that was how it started.

Today, everyone from high-school kids to seasoned vetrans, are whipping off generic games (not just in the defense genre) because the big commercial sites will dish out $500 or so, for pretty much anything that works (and even some things that don’t). The casual players tend to stick to these commercialized sites, because they brand all the games they sponsor to the degree that the players feel these sites are where all the games are coming from. For many casual players… these are the only sites they check for new games.

This is great for these sites, as they build strong user bases, and stronger revenue streams. This is good for the developers because they can earn sponsorships without having to put fourth a great deal of effort. This is bad for the industry because the quality content is being buried by the quantity content.

And now, a word from our sponsors...

I'm selling out. I'm putting up ads.

Not that I really think I can sell out for an significant amount of coin, but I want to play around a bit with the consumer-side of adsense and some of it's competitors, so I'm trying a couple things for a few months and I'll see how they pan out. I'll share results (if any) here at that time.

The first thing is putting an ad block on my blog. I'm using text ad links and as you can see (at right, under 'sponsors') they have yet to populate the feed. We'll see whether anything comes of it. Proceeds from these ads, if any, will go to my yearly contribution to the EFF. Ads won't be a big part of the blog and the blog will continue to deliver the miniscule value that it does by entertaining readers via my pedantic banter about games, kids, and my cat, etc. It'll also serve as the yardstick for the other thing I'm doing.

The second thing I'm trying is a little more interesting, IMHO. Inspired by this Seth Godin post, I created another blog, with a very narrow focus. It'll get one post a day, and that's it. You can find it at www.gamebizvideo.com. Proceeds from the ads on this site (again, should there be any), will be used to market the blog itself. I want to see whether niche content + shoestring bootstrapping can work. Again, I'll share results here.

That is all, we now return you to regularly scheduled programming.

One for the ladies?

Silverjet airlines in the UK is attempting to differentiate themselves by having at least one ladies-only restroom per plane. Nice differentiator.

This ad talking about it, while catchy, I think misses the mark of it's target audience.

At least I think so. I think I'll go watch it a few more times to decide...

...but then you have to close

When I lived on the east coast, I never got acquainted with pressure washers. Then I moved to the Pacific Northwest and learned that the hundred-plus days of consecutive wet that we call winter (eat your heart out Noah) tends to make lots of things moldy/mildewy/mossy and so a pressure washer becomes standard household equipment.

I went out and bought one this weekend, and now the deck around the pool looks shiny clean.

When shopping for pressure washers, you quickly learn that there are two variables at play, and that they scale more or less linearly: Price, and Pressure (as in output water pressure ) rated in PSI. There's also a gas vs electric question, but I have a hunch that this is a non issue. Small ones are electric, big ones are gas, and that's that.

It only takes a couple minutes using one to figure out that more pressure means that you can hold the diverging spray further away from the work surface, and that this in turn means the spray is wider and you can cover a larger area in less time. Given that more powerful units cost more, there's a pretty clear time-is-money trade-off the buyer is making.

I don't think most people figure this out before buying one. Thus I was pleased when shopping for one this weekend and saw that Loews has all their displays with a uniformly presented rating translation. Something akin to "this pressure washer can clean a _25_ square foot area in 5 minutes.

I have a hunch, however, that they are leaving a bunch of sales on the table. What they should have done was connected the dots for buyers. Determine the size of the average deck or driveway, and then said "This unit will clean the average driveway in 4 hrs".

Customers would have a clear choice then of what their money bought them. "Hmm.... do I want to spend an extra $100 to save 2 hrs every time I do the driveway?"

Never hurts to make the value proposition crystal clear to the customer.

Hath no one an itch to bitch about the pitch?

I have no idea what in-game product placements are going for in triple-A game titles these days. However, the Freakonomics blog points us to this interesting Businessweek post about the cost of product placement in TV shows like Martha, Oprah, etc, that may point to a high point for us to shoot for.

Stewart’s syndicated NBC show, which airs daily at 4 PM, is currently lagging in the ratings and can only charge advertisers about $10,000 for a 30-second spot, as opposed to $18,000 for The View or a staggering $100,000 for Oprah. But if an advertiser spends at least $250,000 total on ads during a season, the money also buys a special “branded segment” on the show, along with mentions in Stewart’s magazine and radio broadcast.

It seems the idea is working: airtime for Martha Stewart Living is sold out through the 2007-08 season. Latecomers or advertisers who don’t want to invest the full $250,000 can also buy a “one-time in-show oral mention with product close-up,” as BusinessWeek calls it, for $100,000, while a two-minute segment that “works in an advertiser’s talking points” starts at $250,000.

A couple things to observe related to gaming:

• The article seems to hint that product placements are being sold in packages along with commercial spots. Most of the game ad stuff I've seen seems to be selling one or the other, not both packaged together (though I'm not sure. I'll have to check what our guys do on MSN Games).
• Not that I've watched a lot of named-for-first-name TV shows, but the product placements are pretty clearly paid-for, and yet the audience doesn't seem to question Martha's cred. Hath no one an itch to bitch about the pitch?